Trent Armand Kendall has stretched his acting muscles in a variety of creative ventures, from making brief TV appearances on Law & Order and the now-defunct Strangers With Candy comedy series to starring in full-scale Broadway productions in NYC, like In the Woods with Vanessa Williams, Hair with Jennifer Hudson and The Wizard of Oz with Mickey Rooney.
Most recently, Kendall starred as The Preacher in the nationally touring production of The Color Purple, though he left the tour last week to embark on several dates for his own solo project, Picture Incomplete, which makes its first stop at Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center this weekend.
The autobiographical one-man musical — created and written by Kendall, and released as an audio recording in September — details the experiences of a black, middle-aged New Yorker who's facing a midlife crisis and mining his own memories for meaning. Via songs, monologues and character studies of the eclectic people he's encountered over the years, Kendall muses on topics like fatherhood, religion and drug addiction while examining what it means to be human.
Picture Incomplete, Nov. 20-23, 8 p.m. Thurs.-Fri., 2 and 8 p.m. Sat., 4 p.m. Sun., Shimberg Playhouse, 1010 N. MacInnes Place, downtown Tampa, $24.50, 813-229-7827, tbpac.org.
This article appears in Nov 19-25, 2008.